We are delighted to announce this year’s residents for the Musical Theatre Workroom.

Taking place at Birmingham Hippodrome this July, the Musical Theatre Workroom is an artist development programme that supports the generation of new, original musicals, and musical theatre teams.

The weeklong workshop-residency will be led by composer Fred Carl and lyricist & librettist Robert Lee – both legendary musical theatre practitioners and specialist tutors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.

Find out more about each of the resident teams below:

Clara at the Door with a Revolver

  • Composer & Lyricist: Ayanna Witter-Johnson
  • Book Writer & Additional Lyrics: Susan Wokoma

Clara at the Door with a Revolver is a new musical with original songs. It is a true crime story – murder mystery meets courtroom drama, with a complex protagonist who goes on one hell of a hero’s journey.

Clara Ford was a mixed-race, working-class, gender non-conforming, pipe- smoking, probably lesbian, 19th century single mother, who defied prejudices of her day to become the hero of her own story. Toronto, October 1894. A young wealthy white man is shot. The mystery of who murdered him grips Toronto. After a blundering police investigation, Clara is arrested and confesses to the killing. A media frenzy surrounds her trial. If found guilty, she will hang. Clara takes to the stand, in front of a jury of 12 white men and gives the performance of her life. After just 1 hour and 3 minutes of jury deliberations, Clara is acquitted and walks free.

One More Game

  • Lyricist: Daniel
  • Book Writer & Producer: Mwansa Phiri 

One More Game is an interactive rap musical that follows four friends — W, X, Y and Z — who become trapped in a mysterious video game after one of them attempts to cheat the system. What begins as an exciting challenge quickly turns into a life altering struggle for survival, as they realise the game’s rules are unpredictable and the choices, they are offered may only be illusions. Set within a world designed to confuse, contain and control, One More Game asks what freedom really means when the system is rigged from the start.

Saf

  • Book/Lyrics/Music: Ishan Mahabir-Stokes
  • Book/Arrangement/Music: Rhani Mahabir-Stokes

Saf loosely follows the life of Indian Princess/Suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh (Saf), the Granddaughter of the Maharajah Ranjit Singh of the Punjab and the Goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Those two relations personify the internal struggle Sophia has with her identity as a British Asian Woman in the 19th Century. The musical will tell her life story through the lens of each of her four siblings: Bamba, Catherine, Freddy and Victor. Each of her siblings represent a different part of her and try to persuade Sophia that she should follow their beliefs, but the question that keeps occurring to Saf is ’what do you believe in?’.

Musical Theatre Workroom is presented by China Plate and Birmingham Hippodrome with Musical Theatre Network, Mercury Musical Developments, Rifco Theatre Company, Royal & Derngate Theatres and Talawa.

As part of the programme’s commitment to championing diverse voices within musical theatre, this opportunity is targeted specifically at new musicals by artists from the global majority.